Bible Month 2017 – The Bible: it’s good for life!

We believe the Bible is good for life! That’s why, in time for this year’s Bible Month, we’ve launched the new Good for Life initiative.

“Good for Life is all about equipping Christians with the tools they need to ensure the Bible remains an important part of their faith,”
Bible Society CEO Francis Burdett

To help churches encourage Bible reading this Bible Month, we’ve produced a set of unique Good for Life videos showing the transformational impact the Bible can have in people’s lives. These stories feature a surfer who broke his back, a Kaikoura earthquake survivor and a young girl who loves Bible stories. Watch the videos on the Good for Life web hub.

And to help church leaders understand more about the relationship New Zealanders have with the Bible, we teamed up with Nielsen to conduct a nationwide Bible reading survey. One key finding centred around the ancient biblical truth, “Do to others has you would have them do to you”.

Respondents were asked what they thought the main message of the Bible is. Aside from those that answered ‘Don’t know’, the strong impression from the general population is that the Bible points to the Golden Rule, “Do to others as you would have them do to you,” Luke 6:31 (NIV). In fact, some young people quoted the verse directly from the Bible.

Another interesting finding was nearly three out of five New Zealanders over 13 years old own a Bible and 7% read the Bible every day. A further 5% read the Bible weekly, meaning more than one in ten New Zealanders over 13 read the Bible every week.

Teenagers (13-18) are more likely than those aged 19-64 to read the Bible and attend church regularly. Those aged 19-24 are significantly different to all other age groups in many areas of the survey.

The 2017 Bible engagement survey also reveals the top barriers to Bible reading for Christians as a lack of self discipline (28%), being distracted by other activities (26%) and being too busy (24%).